Action-thoughts and the genesis of time in linguistic semiosis

The genesis of time is explained in the spirit of constructivism combined with the activity approach to cognition. The cardinal temporal categories of present, past, and future are dis­cussed in terms of action-thoughts understood as elementary units of activity whose structure is determined by linguistic semiosis. Husserl’s tripartite model of the phenomenology of time (prime perception, retention, protention) is applied to the analysis of the subject’s experience of his actions. It is demonstrated that, while our lived present is composed of the actually per­formed actions, our past and future are constructed by reflexive action-thoughts in the cogni­tive domain of language. It is emphasized that the construction of a temporal sequence that unites what is and what already or still is not, is possible only in linguistic semiosis. The analogy with Husserl’s tripartite structure of the time-consciousness flow helps elucidate the triad ‘present-past-future’ as an instance of the epistemological trap of language: ‘past’ and ‘future’ are mental constructs that belong to the present just as any other act of thinking.

Events and narration in socio-cultural practices

The article deals with the dynamic interaction of events and narratives. As a result of this interaction, stable links ‘events-narratives’ appear; they influence the formation and transformation of social and cultural processes in society. Event-narrative links form the basis of the system of norms and values of society. The corpus of ‘event-narrative’ links creates be­havioural patterns, serves as a motivator for members of society, a cause and reason for ac­tions and an initiator of terraced events that inevitably occur as a response to events in reali­ty. The emerging connections ‘event — narrative — action (special event)’ represent a system with a controlled feedback. Depending on a change in the factors of the occurrence and course of events, such a system can both enhance and reduce the result and consequences of events. In these systems, an event triggers social and cultural processes and creates social reality.

Translating philosophical aesthetics: Peritext as a win­dow into the translator's mind. Part 2

Providing space for elucidating key translational issues is not a mundane practice but a privilege only hand-picked texts enjoy, philosophical writings among them. The challenge of translating philosophical discourse is widely recognized but scarcely explored. In this article, translation of philosophical texts is regarded as a procedure of knowledge transfer from one intellectual space into another and of knowledge-making through reconceptualization of key terms. This process is made partly observable in various types of notes — a special cluster of additional information known as translational peritext where translators are given an oppor­tunity to explicate their decisions made in the course of translation. Among translation hur­dles in philosophical discourse are technical terms which are often either in­vented or re-conceptualized by the scholar and then need to be re-contextualized by the trans­lator. Seeking to reflect on translation as a heuristic process, this paper will focus on the reso­lution of the potential cognitive dissonance and the translator’s justification of sense-oriented strategies in dealing with such key concepts as ‘connoisseur’, ‘grace’, ‘sublime’, and ‘je ne sçai quoi’ in the translation of the seminal work on the philosophy of aesthetics Analysis of Beauty by the celebrated 18th century English artist William Hogarth.

Imposture as a problem of reference: semiotics of the name in Boris Godunov

In this article, we continue to address the mechanisms of presenting oneself as another and another as oneself. In this regard, non-trivial features of the semantics of a proper name are described. Based on the analysis of contexts of inappropriate use of a name in a situation of imposture, described in Pushkin's tragedy Boris Godunov, the author considers semiotic mechanisms of transformation and assignment of identity. The article shows that Pushkin's intuition allowed him to see the problems that arose in the analytical philosophy of the name of the second half of the 20th century. Pushkin consistently creates contexts in which the con­ditions of acceptability or unacceptability of deviating uses are tested. On the one hand, these features allow the author to offer an additional, logical and semantic dimension for the inter­pretation of the tragedy Boris Godunov. On the other hand, they significantly clarify the ex­isting theories of the proper name, showing their possible non-trivial, and in some cases, prob­lematic consequences. Simultaneously, the logical-semantic analysis makes it possible to iden­tify the mechanisms of imposture and the communicative conditions for its success.

Digital storytelling and micro-narratives — new forms of rep­re­sen­tation of personal experience and collective creativity

The article analyses the impact of digital technologies on storytelling. By creating new information streams of personalised stories with open storylines in the virtual media envi­ronment, the author shares the process of writing a story with other participants in the digital world. The interaction between the author and the audience is transformed under the influ­ence of the hypertext system of cross-references. Each participant in this creative process acts not only as a co-creator, but also as a co-author of many narratives. The narratives, which translate personalized evaluative and often pseudo-expert opinions into the public space, are becoming increasingly emotional to the detriment of the content. Constantly increasing the information flow and immersing its participants in the interactive world of emotional collec­tive meta-narratives composed of fragments of individual stories, the users build a single digi­tal content. By labelling their stories, they relate them to large thematic clusters of homogene­ous information, including their individual experiences in a single space of collective story­telling. Participating in the process of constant co-creation, users construct their own virtual world, filling it with micro-narrative stories of collective creativity, subsequently living inde­pendently in the digital space. The artificially created virtual information environment is constantly multiplying due to the reproduction of hypertextual stories by all participants of storytelling and, as a result, it begins to reproduce itself.

Translation of new sociological terminology: challenges and solutions

Rapid development of concepts in modern sociology leads to the emergence of a large number of neological terms. Currently, the academic language of Russian sociology sees an active expansion of foreign language terminology and translated terms reflecting changes in the English-language social picture of the world. However, the lack of consistency in intra-lingual and inter-lingual translation of new terms may complicate the understanding of this terminology by representatives of multilingual academic schools. This study aims to analyse modern English sociological terms and translated borrowings in Russian, to explore their form and conceptual content in two languages, the degree of their conventionality in the sci­entific thesaurus of multilingual sociological schools and the possibility of an adequate trans­fer of terminological meaning from English into Russian. The authors view the sociological term as a cognitive, linguistic and cultural phenomenon, and study its synchronic and dia­chronic variability. The article is an attempt to illuminate the problem from a purely linguis­tic and translation point of view and to point out the need for combining efforts to systematise and harmonise the English and Russian terminologies of sociology.

Comparative analysis of the epistemological language in translation

The article presents a comparative analysis of the translation of basic epistemological terms and attempts to analyse cognitive factors underlying the construction of meaning in the translation process. Apart from linguistic expertise, the translation of philosophical texts re­quires a profound understading of the subject matter. Ambiguity of philosophical terms, which appears as a result of the development of a particular concept within a specific philo­sophical school of thought, may lead to inconsistencies in the translation decision-making. The paper aims to apply a cognitive approach to the translation of epistemological terms into the German and English language: Erkenntnis/cognition vs knowledge. In this study, context is interpreted as a verbalization of a specific conceptual frame facilitating the identification of the appropriate meaning of the term on a deeper, conceptual level. The article contains nu­merous examples from the works of Immanuel Kant translated into English as well as the data from multilingual translation corpora which are used to describe translation-relevant aspects of conceptual integration in philosophical discourse.

Translation of postmodern terminology in the philo- sophical works by M. Foucault, J. Baudrillard, and J. Derrida

The article examines the specifics of the translation of postmodern philosophical termi- nology. The authors explore Russian translations of the works of the modern French postmodernist philosophers Michel Foucault, Jean Baudrillard and Jacques Derrida. Postmodernism as a philosophical movement is based on the concept of radical plurality. It is characterised by the multiplicity of dimensions and types of analysis. The authors look into the problem of choosing strategies for the translation of postmodern terminology and analyse the dilemma translators have to face: how to manoeuvre between polysemy and ambiguity in the translation of philosophical terms. The article analyses the translation of Foucault’s seminal work Les Mots et les Choses (translated by Avtonomova and Vizgin). Special attention is paid to the problem of translation of the postmodern terms discourse and episteme. Another focus of research is the analysis of the translation of Baudrillard’s work Simulacres et Simulation (translated by Pechenkina). In the final part of the article, the authors analyse the peculiarities of the translation of Derrida's treatise into Russian.

The noun visilka: a semantic portrait and a sys­tem of multiple meanings (based on police search documentation of the second half of the 19th century)

his article is devoted to one of the important aspects of studying the Russian business language of the second half of the 19th century — the formation of the lexical meaning of the noun visilka (exile, expulsion), typical of the police procedure documentation of the time. The author discovered business texts of this type in the funds of the State Archive of the Tyumen region, the State Archive of the Omsk region, and the State Archive of the Irkutsk region. All texts date back to the late 19th century. The study of the lexeme visilka was conducted in ac­cordance with the lexicographic portraiture methodology (proposed by Apresyan and Mayorov) and the principles of linguistic study of source texts. A comprehensive analysis of the lexical distribution of the noun visilka determined the necessity of abstract or concrete-abstract vector locatives, which expanded the lexical meaning of this lexeme in the business texts of the second half of the 19th century. The authors identified the main semantic features of the noun visilka (the dominance of the archiseme — 'process', the existence of the differen­tial semes 'result', 'actions of people involved in a police search'). Further research is aimed at examining business writings from Western and Eastern Siberia, which belong to a different genre and a different time period. Further research will be based on the texts from the Nation­al Corpus of the Russian language, the Uppsala and Tyubinsk corpuses, the database of the Russian press Integrum and Open Corpus.

Literary communication: from semiotic models to a theory of linguistic aesthetics

The article explores literary communication as one of the types of linguistic communica­tion. The main objective is to develop a linguo-aesthetic model of literary communication based on the models of the sign, semiosis and communication adopted in linguistics, semiotics and poetics. The author employs semiotic methods of modelling the sign and communication, developed in the works of Frege, Peirce, Shpet, Mukařovsky, Jakobson, Lotman, Eco, Novikov, and Zolyan. The emphasis is laid on the models of the sign and the corresponding models of semiosis in relation to literary systems. The concept of literary communication is given a new definition; it refers to the interaction of the author as an artist and the reader (viewer, listen­er) through a message or an utterance as a work of art. A correlation is established between the structure of the literary sign and the structure of the act of literary communication. The linguo-aesthetic model of artistic communication reflects the correspondence between types of literary signs and elements of communication.